Page 13 of Auctioned to the Mountain Man

Instead of answering her, I ask my own question. “Why did you send your brother to get me?”

She gasps. “Eddie’s there?”

“No, Ben is here.”

She’s quiet for a second and then blurts out, “Ben is there? My brother Ben… is at the auction?”

My voice drops a little. Elana is good, but she really does sound like she doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. “Yes. Ben is here, and he bid on me.”

“He what?”

I look over at Ben, and he’s holding on to the steering wheel with white knuckles. “You didn’t know?”

Elana gasps into the phone. “No, I didn’t know. How did he even know you were there? I didn’t tell him.”

“I’ll call you back,” I tell her and then hang up.

I turn in my seat and face him. “What is going on, Ben? Why did you come?”

He enunciates each word. “Because I wasn’t going to let you sell yourself to some stranger, that’s why.”

“What do you care? You hate me.”

His rigid jaw softens along with his voice. “I don’t hate you.”

“Right. I’m just a hot piece of ass to you.” He doesn’t say anything, but I’m not going to stop until I get to the bottom of this. “How did you know… oh shit, you were there to bid on someone. You saw me and felt you needed to save me or something. You were there for someone else.”

He looks at me with a tight expression on his face. “No.”

Exasperated, I throw my hand up. “No what?”

He turns back to the road in front of us. “No, I wasn’t there for someone else.”

My body quivers. If he wasn’t there for someone else, does that mean he really was there for me? No. There’s no way. “Why then?”

His voice is hard. “Because I wasn’t going to stand by while you sold yourself to some stranger. Fuck, Maggie. You have no idea how much I hated seeing you up there.”

Has he thought of me at all these last few weeks? Is he doing this because I work for him? Why does he care when all he wanted was a piece of ass?

I cringe at the thought that comes next. “Does everyone at work know?”

He grits his teeth. “No.”

“So if no one knows, and Elana didn’t tell you, how did you know I was there?”

He blows out a breath as he stops at a stop sign. “You’re not going to like it, Maggie.”

He starts to drive again, and I turn in my seat with one hand on the dashboard. “I’m not going to like it? What does that even mean?”

He shrugs. “It means you’re not going to like it.”

“Ben! Stop this. I’m tired of these games. How did you know about this?”

He keeps his eyes on the road. “Elana came to dinner the other night and told me you were going on vacation, but she wouldn’t tell me where. I was worried about you, and I had to know.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I looked at your email.”

I think back to the invitation I’d received and the application I sent back. “My email? Wait, that was my personal email.”

He looks at me almost guiltily. “I know.”

---